Finite is doable. Make your project smaller. Make it finite. Make it doable. Big, ambitious projects get done by shipping small, specific, finite versions.
What you don't ask for... You either don't get it. Or you leave it to chance. We can create the conditions to get what we need or want. And a crucial part of it is making the ask. “Many years ago, the Detroit newspapers carried a feature story about a monstrous insurance policy
This might not work. There is magic in "this might not work". It brings a lightness to the process. It allows for creativity and audacity. It allows us to focus on the process and finetune it. "This might not work" creates possibility that can't be accessed with a
Finding the right culture. One of the reasons that you may not be thriving could be that you are in the wrong culture. Not wrong in the absolute, but wrong for you. There’s a culture for each type of person. And the hard work is to find the one where you thrive.
Get in tune... Excerpt from Pathways to Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander: “…to embark on the exploration “Get in Tune,” open yourself to the idea of a complex universe, pulsing and vibrating, that is striving to attune with you. Imagine that everyone you meet desires to be in tune with you, as does
Because everyone does it that way... ...doesn't mean that you have to do it that way too. Be relentless in your pursuit of happiness. ~ Anonymous
What's the next "one" thing? If it is more than one, then the next thing would be to select one out of the many. And that might actually be the hard part. Once we select the one thing we are getting done next, we can focus on it and create forward motion. Otherwise, we may
The first draft is the hardest. No one complains about how hard the second draft is. It’s always the first draft. No matter how ugly it is, once we get the first draft done, it only gets easier from there onwards. Once we have something on paper, we can always make it better.
Choose your assumptions, choose your future. Our assumptions have little to do with reality, and much to do with the stories we tell ourselves. The good thing about the latter is that we have the agency to choose what story we tell. We can learn to reject the ones that don't work for us
Last minute rush. When we are faced with a last-minute rush, we buckle up and try to get the work done somehow before it's too late. We work late nights and weekends and whatnot and there is a heroic feeling when it all gets done. What we skip mostly, though, is
Writing > Thinking Mind maps, free-flow writing, numbered lists, bulleted lists, the tools of writing can vary depending on the situation. But writing is almost always more effective than thinking. When we are feeling stuck, writing is a reliable way to start moving towards getting ourselves unstuck.
Being the Board Excerpt From The Art of Possibility by Ben Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander: WHEN the way things are seems to offer no possibility; when you are angry and blocked, and, for all your efforts, others refuse to move or cooperate, to compromise, or even to be halfway decent; when even
Can you time-box it? It's a trick statement to say, "I am working on it full-time." What does that mean? Does that mean 40 hours a week? Does that mean more? Or less? Full-time allows us to get off the hook. Instead, "I am committing to work on it
When the voice is heavy. When resistance is heavy, it becomes difficult to move forward on any task, even those that we would have otherwise done easily. The voice creates doubts and asks questions. "Is this something you should be doing right now?" "Isn’t there a better way to do this?
When in doubt, ship it. When in doubt, ship it. Don't think. Don't delay. Ship it. You can always make it better later. But, for now, ship it.
Permission slip. Excerpt From Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert: "You do not need a permission slip from the principal’s office to live a creative life. Or if you do worry that you need a permission slip—THERE, I just gave it to you. I just wrote it on the back
Building new habits. Old habits are like 4-lane highways in our neural system. They go from cue to craving to response to reward in an instant. The number of iterations are the reason behind the efficiency of such a system. On the other hand, new habits, especially those where we are affected by
What needs to be done? If we get done what needs to be done, we create space for what we want to do. It doesn't work the other way around. "I'll do only what I want to do" is for amateurs. "I'll do what I need
Getting the wrong message. When someone says no, the amygdala reacts a couple of seconds faster than the pre-frontal cortex can respond. The amygdala perceives the no as personal, as malevolent, as insidious. There is a chance that the amygdala might be right but the likelihood of that is extremely low.
Navigating blind spots. Asking for help. Enrolling for tough feedback. It's a gift to surround yourself with friends who can nudge and tell you that you have spinach in your teeth. You can't fix what you can't see.
The generosity of the cheerleader. They push the creative forward. They create a defence against the voice of doubt. They make the creative believe and take the leap. Cheerleaders make us feel like a team playing on its home ground. The wind is behind our back when we are surrounded by them. When in doubt,
What does v1 look like? The original iPhone did not have "copy and paste" functionality. It didn't matter that it might be only have been a few hours work for a software person to put the functionality in. It didn't matter because when we think of a phone, this
Insufficiency or optimism? Which story do we choose to tell ourselves? What are we creating evidence towards? Insufficiency is a bottomless container which will always find evidence proving us to be insufficient. Optimism, on the contrary, is a story of growth, of change, or making things better. Fear can make us choose insufficiency
The data doesn’t lie. There’s a saying in the health world, “Blood doesn’t lie”. You may believe what you want to believe about your health, but a blood test can tell exactly how it is. How can we create an equivalent of this for our work? What metrics would tell us the
Accepting all of you. Desire. fear. love. ambition. Taking all the parts with you. With love, with compassion. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. But it requires all the parts to be whole.
